Content:
One of several manuscripts in which Whitman records and develops ideas for a poem
that never emerged about the crusades. In this manuscript, Whitman
relates "the Crusades" and "our own great war" through the observation
that great revolutions have "been mainly for an idea." Whitman mentions the crusades specifically in both his prose works
Specimen Days &
Collect
(1882–1883) and
Democratic Vistas
(1871), though a direct link between these manuscript
notes and any of his published works is unclear. The verso contains part
of a cancelled letter about the steamer
Georgia
between Charles Francis Adams,
Minister to England during the Civil War, and Earl Russell, British
Foreign Minister. Other dated materials containing notes on the crusades
suggest this manuscript was likely composed around 1869.
